I love art! I am not an artist myself, but I love looking at art, thinking about art, talking about art, and writing about art! And that’s what I get to do right now- I want to tell you about Art Everywhere, a project that was launched today to bring American art to the American public. Five great museums- the Dallas Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City have each submitted twenty works from their collections to be included on the website ArtEverywhereUS.org. From April 7 through May 7 viewers can vote on their favorites, and the fifty most popular images will appear on 50,000 billboards and other outdoor sites around the country, for four weeks, starting August 4.

The project is modeled on one that that was done last summer in Great Britain and stirred up so much interest that an outdoor advertising trade group decided to organize something like it here. It’s a collaboration between the participating museums and the Outdoor Advertising Association of America to attract attention for the museums and encourage visitors, and to give a boost to the billboard business, which has suffered since the predominance of online advertising. It’s a great way to bring art to the people and then include them in a national art project. I love art because it is visually interesting and it makes me think. I think art is extremely interesting, but I know not everyone feels the same way; lots of people I know think art is booooring- they yawn at the mere suggestion of a museum date. By creating an interactive art project, people might become interested in something they would ordinarily run far away from. Very smart idea!

So, check out the website and vote. You might recognize the images, as some of them are well-known, almost iconic examples of American art. If you know the pictures, enjoy looking at them, and feel like you’re part of something. If you are unfamiliar with the works, who knows- you might discover that you are an art lover too. In any case, you can tell your friends that you participated in a nationwide art project, which sounds very impressive, even if you are still bored to tears.